My mother grew up loving horses and when we moved to the country we always had a barn full of horses. Horses were my best friends growing up and when I left home I worked at racetracks and breeding farms for the first three years on my own. It wasn’t until my children were almost grown that we ended up getting horses ourselves. We carefully searched and rode many horses before we decided on two that were not only beautiful but we deemed safe to ride and work around.
One of our horses, Sir Bay’s Fascination, (Facsi for short) has always had a bit of an attitude. Although she would never hurt people; she likes to have her own way if she can get away with it. Mostly she argues about food. She lives for eating. Right now she lives with the goats because she bullied the last horse we had. We don’t dare put her together with our little pony Caddy, he thinks he is big and tough and would tell her, “make my dayâ€(in horse speak of course). Fasci would not take kindly to being challenged and I’m afraid Caddy would get hurt.
But Fasci has always been kind to her goats. She shares her hay with them and lets them push her around. So I was surprised to see her standing in the stall door with all the goats outside in the rain. The goats hate the rain. I can tell when it is starting to rain because there is a small stampede of goats headed to the barn. It has been raining a lot lately. Today I watched Ruth (our most stubborn goat) trying to get past Fasci into the cover of the barn. Fasci was putting on her best mean face, ears back and shaking her head at the persistent goat. The goat slipped past her into the stall a few times. Fasci would turn around and disappear into the stall and Ruth would scoot back out. Fasci was right behind, resuming her post as door guard again. This happened several times. The goats were all crowded up against the side of the barn trying to escape the rain looking miserable. Finally Fasci gave up and went back out to the pasture. We are guessing she wanted to eat in the rain and was trying to make them come out and keep her company.
Fasci is 23 years old and not likely to change but I love her, even when she is ornery. Funny thing is her caring for our goats in a strange way is her caring for this great soap we make.
Do you have horses you love and a crazy story about one of them?